This is a repository for all cool scientific discussion and fascination. Scientific facts, theories, and overall cool scientific stuff that you'd like to share with others. Stuff that makes you smile and wonder at the amazing shit going on around us, that most people don't notice.

Originally Posted by scott free:
But isn't space pretty much the definition of infinity, how can there be an end to it, where, or how, would it end?

Not trying to snark, but its a pretty big conundrum, even guys like Hawking haven't wrapped their heads all the way around it yet.

Some see it as infinite. Some say it can't be infinite. I have no clue how there could be an end to it. Would it be a fuzzy wall kinda like The Truman Show that you just bump into? Maybe an Escher type scenario where you go so far you end up at the other side and it really is donut shaped? Maybe there's a door at the end that leads to Universe 2?

Our thoughts, math, physics, etc. all fail when trying to describe it. Which could also indicate that the universe is just a computer simulation and those things cannot be understood because they're undefined.[Reply]

Scientists have discovered a new type of virus in 30,000-year-old permafrost and managed to revive it, producing an infection.

Fortunately, the new virus, named Pithovirus sibericum, infects amoebas and is not harmful to humans.

But its ability to become infectious again after so many millenniums is a warning, writes Jean-Michel Claverie at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique at Aix-Marseille University and his colleagues in a new study published Monday.

"The revival of such an ancestral amoeba infecting virus … suggests that the thawing of permafrost either from global warming or industrial exploitation of circumpolar regions might not be exempt from future threats to human or animal health," they wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Giant DNA viruses, first discovered just 10 years ago, are so big compared with most other viruses that they are visible under a visible light microscope. Before the new virus was discovered, just two families were known. Both infect amoebas.

The researchers collected a 30,000-year-old permafrost core from Siberia. In order to hunt for giant viruses, they took a type of amoeba that often gets infected with giant viruses and used it as bait. After the amoebas were exposed to permafrost samples, the amoebas became infected with a previously unknown giant virus. The virus has a mix of traits from the two known giant virus families.

The researchers suggest that looking for amoeba-infecting viruses in permafrost is an "inexpensive and safe way to realistically assess the threat" posed by pathogens that might be released from ancient frozen soils and sediments as permafrost melts, either due to global warming or industrial activities such as mining and drilling.[Reply]

A Penwortham schoolboy is the youngest person in the world to build a nuclear fusion reactor.

Teen scientist Jamie Edwards. 13, built the reactor from scratch, with help from his school, in a race against time to snatch the world record off American Taylor Wilson, who was 14 when he became the youngest ‘fusioneer’ in 2008.

Jamie, who is 14 on Sunday, started building the reactor in October in a under-used science laboratory at Priory Academy and finally finished the task this morning , making two atoms of hydrogen smash together to make helium – a nuclear fusion.

The young boffin said: “ It is quite an achievement. “It’s magnificent really. I can’t quite believe it – even though all my friends think I am mad.”

Jamie has always had a taste for science and used to try and do his older brother Danny’s science homework.

He said: “One day, I was looking on the internet for radiation or other aspects of nuclear energy and I came across Taylor Wilson and his reactor.

“I looked at it, thought ‘that looks cool’ and decided to have a go.

Basically I made a star in a jar. It’s amazing really, quite a feat, to be from Penwortham and be the youngest person in the world to do this.”

Jamie, along with friend George Barker who has helped him with the administrative side, set about trying to create the nuclear fusion reactor by contacting like-minded physicists.

Trying to rise the funds wasn’t easy. Jamie said: “I went to various nuclear laboratories and universities and they didn’t seem to take me seriously .”

So, he went his head teacher Jim Hourigan in October.

Jamie added: “I had to give a presentation and talk to him about safety, the benefits and what could go right or wrong.

“I needed £2,000 and he said he would fund it and also put £1,000 into a contingency fund so that myself and others could continue my work as I would like to make it energy efficient.”

Mr Hourigan added: “I was a bit stunned and I have to say a little nervous when Jamie suggested this but he reassured me he wouldn’t blow the school up.

Wilson has since become an internet sensation.”

The fusion took place in a controlled environment in school before an audience of experts.

It was video and now has to be officially recognized by the Fusioneers.

R&B Switchgear tested the electronics due to the high voltage which was needed in the control panel and Manchester University have been involved in checking the machinery.

Several of the staff, along with Jamie and George, went to Westinghouse Springfields Fuels Ltd for a risk assessment and safety course.

Originally Posted by scott free:
what was out there before the big bang?

We don't know. It doesn't seem reasonable to me to believe that nothing existed before that. Scientists used to believe that the universe cycles with a bang, expansion, slowing down to a contraction, a great crunch, and then the next big bang. But now we see that the expansion is not slowing down, it appears to be accelerating with no end in sight. So, the cycle theory doesn't seem to be valid.

So now, scientists are back to being thoroughly confused about what happened before the big bang.[Reply]

The idea of genetically altering people’s cells to make them resist the virus that causes AIDS may seem like a pipe dream, but a new report suggests it can be done.

The research involves the first use in humans of “gene editing,” a treatment that zeros in on a particular gene and disables it.

In 12 people infected with H.I.V., scientists used the technique to get rid of a protein on the patients’ immune cells that the virus must latch onto to invade the cells. Cells were removed from the patients, treated and then dripped back into their bloodstreams through an intravenous line.

In theory, if enough cells could be engineered to repel the virus, patients might no longer need antiviral drugs, and might in effect be cured.

The experiment was a pilot study, meant to test safety, not efficacy. It found that immune cells could be altered, and that doing so did not harm patients. The gene editing also seemed to help fight the infection in some cases, but the findings are preliminary and researchers cautioned that widespread use of the technique is a long way off.

Originally Posted by Fish:
Some see it as infinite. Some say it can't be infinite. I have no clue how there could be an end to it. Would it be a fuzzy wall kinda like The Truman Show that you just bump into? Maybe an Escher type scenario where you go so far you end up at the other side and it really is donut shaped? Maybe there's a door at the end that leads to Universe 2?

Our thoughts, math, physics, etc. all fail when trying to describe it. Which could also indicate that the universe is just a computer simulation and those things cannot be understood because they're undefined.

Not to make fun or denigrate you at all, or pretend to have a better answer... but there IS NO WALL, how CAN there be...?

It just goes on and on and on to, you guessed it... infinity.

I'll state my belief here and leave it as is I swear... ONLY God can explain ENDLESSNESS, that's just it for me... how do you explain eternal nothing, there is no "wall" to space, it just goes on and on.

Hawking, Tyson, don't really care who is put forth... they cannot explain how all of this came to be, much less where the material for it came from nor where it all ends.

Science is ARROGANT, it attempts to explain the UNEXPLAINABLE... and if you don't subscribe to the mainstream magazine, you're a heretic and a kook.

Originally Posted by scott free:
Not to make fun or denigrate you at all, or pretend to have a better answer... but there IS NO WALL, how CAN there be...?

It just goes on and on and on to, you guessed it... infinity.

I'll state my belief here and leave it as is I swear... ONLY God can explain ENDLESSNESS, that's just it for me... how do you explain eternal nothing, there is no "wall" to space, it just goes on and on.

Hawking, Tyson, don't really care who is put forth... they cannot explain how all of this came to be, much less where the material for it came from nor where it all ends.

Science is ARROGANT, it attempts to explain the UNEXPLAINABLE... and if you don't subscribe to the mainstream magazine, you're a heretic and a kook.

Originally Posted by scott free:
Not to make fun or denigrate you at all, or pretend to have a better answer... but there IS NO WALL, how CAN there be...?

It just goes on and on and on to, you guessed it... infinity.

I'll state my belief here and leave it as is I swear... ONLY God can explain ENDLESSNESS, that's just it for me... how do you explain eternal nothing, there is no "wall" to space, it just goes on and on.

Hawking, Tyson, don't really care who is put forth... they cannot explain how all of this came to be, much less where the material for it came from nor where it all ends.

Science is ARROGANT, it attempts to explain the UNEXPLAINABLE... and if you don't subscribe to the mainstream magazine, you're a heretic and a kook.

Galileo knows that feeling...

We don't know. So you cannot really make claims about what there can or cannot be. Infinity is just as impossible to describe as a contained universe.

It's very dangerous to simply attribute things that cannot be presently explained as therefore being acts of God, as if they are forever unknowable. History has unequivocally proven that the more we learn more about the universe, the fewer unknowns there are to be attributed to God. The windows of unknowns have been shrinking considerably, especially in the last few centuries. But one thing has been certain, it's never went the other direction. We have an incredible ways to go in understanding for sure.

Science is not arrogant. It attempts to understand the unexplainable. It's driven by truth and accuracy. You don't have to be mainstream you just have to be proven.

Galileo was punished by the Church. He's a perfect example of making a scientific claim, which in today's times would sound as crazy as saying there's an end to the universe. The Church said he was arrogant for proclaiming to know more than what the Bible said. Turns out he was correct.

Please don't try and turn this into a science bashing battle again. This is the last I'm commenting on this.[Reply]

Originally Posted by scott free:
Not to make fun or denigrate you at all, or pretend to have a better answer... but there IS NO WALL, how CAN there be...?

It just goes on and on and on to, you guessed it... infinity.

I'll state my belief here and leave it as is I swear... ONLY God can explain ENDLESSNESS, that's just it for me... how do you explain eternal nothing, there is no "wall" to space, it just goes on and on.

Hawking, Tyson, don't really care who is put forth... they cannot explain how all of this came to be, much less where the material for it came from nor where it all ends.

Science is ARROGANT, it attempts to explain the UNEXPLAINABLE... and if you don't subscribe to the mainstream magazine, you're a heretic and a kook.

Galileo knows that feeling...

well, except there is no God.

Its a natural instinct of humans to ascribe anything that they don't understand or looks like magic, to "Gods", but that is not rational.[Reply]